Standing beneath the steeple, playing in the cornfields, learning to be a pastor while trying to faithfully preach the Good News, and the church who loves me anyway.

Feelin’ Fruity

Intro
This is perhaps the best known passage in the whole book of Galatians. Like we do out of so many other passages that we love, countless needlepoints and posters have been made out of the wise words that we’re offered here. We love hearing about freedom, and the “fruits of the spirit” makes a nice bible school lesson for which we can cut out fruit shapes and more or less call it a day.

But I wonder if this passage says all that we think it does?

As I was looking at it again this week, the very first thing I noticed is that nowhere (at least in the translation I was studying) does the word “from” appear. I might be the only person in here who gets worked up about grammar, but this little tiny thing is actually pretty big when you think about it. When we think about freedom, we always seem to think of it as if we have been “freed from” something. Next Sunday, we’ll celebrate our independence. That is to celebrated that we’ve been freed from the tyranny of another country’s rule. When teenagers are finally released from being grounded, they’ll say something like “I’m finally free!” That is, they are freed from that punishment that they are certain is too harsh. Even in Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech, he said, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last.” What he was talking about was being freed from the oppression of racial division. Think about it for a second. Most of the examples you can think of that regard any sort of freedom are freedom from things.

Hmmm… but oddly, Paul doesn’t mention that we are freed from anything. (It sure might have made my sermon easier if that’s the move he made!) That makes me think about a couple of things. First of all, Paul doesn’t make any empty promises about how easy our Christian life is going to be– as if we’re free from all these things of the world that are such a pain. And besides that, he doesn’t leave any room for excuses. There’s no way we can twist his words into a scapegoat for ourselves as if we could say, “Nuh-uh… I’ve been set free…that doesn’t apply to me.” But the other thing that Paul’s grammar makes me think is that there must be different types of freedom. Maybe the “From Freedoms” are the political sort.

And if that’s the case, then maybe the “For Freedoms” are a spiritual sort of freedom. For what could we be set free? For service, for love, for being real and genuine Christians.

Christian Freedom
I guess that makes me ask the question “What is Christian Freedom?” If you look closely at Paul’s words, as he talks about making ourselves slaves to one another, we get the idea that Christian freedom isn’t exactly a “whatever suits your fancy” sort of freedom.
First of all, we’d tend to think of freedom maybe as an absence of the things that tie us down. When Donovan was out of town last week, several people (let’s be honest…of course they were all men) said that Donovan was probably having the time of his life. Footloose and wife-free in Atlanta. He could eat all the terrible food he wanted, he could park my car in all the places in which my doors are likely to get more dinged up. Heck, he could even drive faster than the speed limit, which his old woman of a wife won’t let him do. Yep…that sounds pretty darn free.

But Christian freedom isn’t the absence of the things that encumber us. Christian Freedom, in a lot of ways, is more a characteristic of the relationships we’re in. And it becomes especially apparent as a result of our relationship with Christ. Christian Freedom, I think, shapes the way we love our neighbors. What’s interesting about this Christian version of freedom are the opportunities presented to us. With this freedom, we can either focus on ourselves, or we can use it as an opportunity to focus on others. We can allow the things on Paul’s list of no-no’s (or the things that we do that should be on a no-no list) to rule our lives, or we can be free to love and serve Christ, trusting that God will work out the details. We can bear the sweet, sweet fruits of the spirit, or we can watch as that sweet fruit turns to soured wine.

Paul asks the impossible of us: to stay away from a whole list of things that are quite common to our world. But here’s the catch: we can’t do it on our own. The fact that we have sense enough to run away from those things is nothing short of a gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s work is about transforming us to a newness of life, shaking us up from our own stubborn, hard-heartedness. The fruits of the spirit are gifts to us, but they are more than the results of being guided by the Spirit in ways that allow us to completely love our neighbors as ourselves. The Spirit shapes us through these “Fruits of the Spirit” so that we become people to whom these fruits taste sweet.

Conclusion– Bearing the fruits
I had a whole sermon written, at least in my head, but then Donovan and I watched a movie this week that, in a lot of ways, rocked my world. And I think the clip I’m going to show says it a lot better than I could. The movie is called “Amish Grace”, which admittedly is a “Lifetime Movie”, but it really blew my mind that people could actually be like this. Perhaps some of you remember the shootings in the Amish community at Nickel Mines a few years ago. A shooter came into the school, sent all the boys away, and held a number of girls hostage– for reasons you can only imagine. But before the day was finished, he shot and killed five of those girls, before turning the gun on himself.

Imagine how you’d feel if you were in that community. Imagine how you’d feel if one of those girls was your daughter or sister or friend. What would your first actions be? As I thought about my own response, I’m pretty sure I’d be in shock. Then maybe overcome by grief, and probably finally, filled with rage–at the gunman, maybe even at God. Oh, I’m sure over the next months and years, I’d work really hard at finding a peace about the whole thing.

I guess that’s why the Amish community’s response blew me away and drove me to tears–because what they did is definitely not something I could do. The very same day as the shootings, a group of Amish men–including one father whose daughter was killed– went to the wife of the shooter’s house and expressed their sorrow for her loss. But more than that, they offered her complete and utter forgiveness on behalf of the community.

I wonder if you’re thinking that forgiveness like that is cheap or “easy”. That’s the question we see raised as a mother who lost her daughter becomes irate at her husband’s actions when he went to the shooter’s wife’s house. The man and woman get in an argument, and the woman makes a statement about how his actions of forgiveness cheapen her daughter’s life. But the man, as he starts crying, responds that forgiveness at this time is one of the hardest things he’s done, and it’s not easy at all. He says, “It is NOT easy. The Lord does not set us on an easy path. Faith, when everything is as you want it to be, is not true faith. It is only when our lives are falling apart that we have the chance to make our faith real.”

But the place in this movie that touched me the most is right here. (And this is near the end– but even if you know this part, you still need to see the movie.) Here you see the mom who has been so angry–especially at the shooter’s widow who is in the plaid shirt here, among other parents that lost girls in the tragedy. Watch and see how the fruits of the Spirit not only allow something so amazing, but how the fruit of the Spirit starts to taste sweet to those who embrace it.

[Show Clip]

Did you see that? That whole section just absolutely blows my mind, and I guess it struck me as especially powerful as I’ve been thinking about both the fruits of the spirit, and Paul’s words, “For Freedom, Christ has set you free.”

How free those people really were! They freedom they show us– freedom from needing to hate and worry about how things will wind up– isn’t necessarily necessarily what we think of when we think of freedom. These people were completely free to trust in Christ. And because of that “For Freedom”, they were able to bear beautiful fruits of the spirit. Our real freedom is evidenced by our character– and that is shown by the fruit we bear.

The Message phrases some of the words from the text we read earlier in this way: “Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.”